Why the NEP must factor in attendance issues
Preschool absenteeism is a predictor of future attendance and academic performance, but despite the benefits, lack of attendance has been documented to be a growing concern.
While the NEP focuses on the benefits of early childhood education, these benefits can only be realised with attendance. The core objective of a successful anganwadi/balwadi/ preschool program is that children arrive and stay in school every day. Preschool absenteeism is a predictor of future attendance and academic performance, but despite the benefits, lack of attendance has been documented to be a growing concern.
There are some parental factors which often cause attendance issues, such as:
1. Preschool children from single-parent households with lower socioeconomic status (SES) are absent from preschool at rates higher than any other group. The reasons could be logistics-related, or the presence of a younger child at home that makes pick up and drop impossible.
2. Some children may have chronic health concerns.
In cases where parents are able to send the children to school, key factors that ensure classroom engagement include:
1. Child teacher ratio: A child responds to a teacher who looks forward to meeting them every day. This could be as simple as sending a message to students when they miss school, and welcoming them back when they return.
2. Providing an engaging curriculum that draws students to school. Pedagogy has three basic components:
(a) Curriculum or the content of what is being taught
(b) Methodology, or the way in which the teaching is done
(c) Techniques for socialising children for successful functioning in society.
3. The classroom must have child-friendly tools; something as simple as being able to hold and place uppercase and lowercase alphabets can lead to several hours of engagement.
4. Role-play, puppetry, simple games, storytelling via reading or narrating, familiarity with oral language, music, nursery rhymes, poems, fingerplays and songs, storybook reading, etc. are all a variety of teaching-learning tools and resources to engage the child.
5. Feedback: What parents love is to know that their children are making progress. Organised and linear feedback goes a long way in making kids feel a part of the curriculum.
India’s administrators are grappling with these matters at the highest level. We have the highest population and diversity of kids to manage. They also know that unless children are engaged in the classroom, there is no real learning that can happen.
When the state government of Chhattisgarh asked Square Panda to implement a pilot program across seven schools, we assessed the students on a continuous basis. What we realised is that when we are able to engage the children in the classroom, after a total of five weeks, word reading improved by over 300 per cent and sentence reading improved by over 125 per cent. These were major achievements and unimaginable results in a village, like Dhamtari. The children were engaged and they attended every single day.
Hence, for successful implementation of the NEP and better attendance and outcomes, we have to ensure the following:
1. Teacher training: One in 6 elementary teachers in India are not trained. The New Education Policy outlines many arguments; most important of which is that currently India spends only three per cent of its GDP on education and ranks 62nd in total public expenditure on education per student.
2. Engaging curriculum: An exciting and apt curriculum for the early learners that incorporates activity and experience-based learning; including game-based learning and storytelling, and therefore ensures both attention and retention among students.
3. Measuring progress: Appropriate formative assessment and feedback mechanism that actually measures the learning outcomes, checks on conceptual clarity and critical thinking rather than just highlighting negative responses to students’ performance. Positive motivators will improve the student-faculty relationship and ensure progress.
4. Chronic absenteeism places children at risk for both social and cognitive learning deficits. Hence, newer modes of learning, with less emphasis on formal and traditional teaching will work wonders to keep up the attendance. A unique, specially designed blended learning method, which focuses less on the rote learning methods and helps children understand how to learn, will work wonders.